Federal Government

NEW YORK — A unsecured backup drive has exposed thousands of US Air Force documents, including highly sensitive personnel files on senior and high-ranking officers.

Security researchers found that the gigabytes of files were accessible to anyone because the internet-connected backup drive was not password protected.

The files, reviewed by ZDNet, contained a range of personal information, such as names and addresses, ranks, and Social Security numbers of more than 4,000 officers. Another file lists the security clearance levels of hundreds of other officers, some of whom possess “top secret” clearance, and access to sensitive compartmented information and codeword-level clearance.

Phone numbers and contact information of staff and their spouses, as well as other sensitive and private personal information, were found in several other spreadsheets.

The drive is understood to belong to a lieutenant colonel, whose name we are not publishing. ZDNet reached out to the officer by email but did not hear back.

Among the most damaging documents on the drive included the completed applications for renewed national security clearances for two US four-star generals, both of whom recently had top US military and NATO positions.

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These completed questionnaires are used to determine a candidate’s eligibility to receive classified material.

Several national security experts and former government officials we spoke to for this story described this information as the “holy grail” for foreign adversaries and spies, and said that it should not be made public.

For that reason, we are not publishing the names of the generals, who have since retired from service.

Nevertheless, numerous attempts to contact the generals over the past week went unreturned.

“Some of the questions ask for information that can be very personal, as well as embarrassing,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, in an email. The form allows prospective applicants to national security positions to disclose arrests, drug and alcohol issues, or mental health concerns, among other things, said Zaid.

Completed SF86 forms aren’t classified but are closely guarded. These were the same kinds of documents that were stolen in a massive theft of sensitive files at the Office of Personnel Management, affecting more than 22 million government and military employees.

“Even if the SF86 answers are innocuous, because of the personal information within the form there is always the risk of identity theft or financial fraud that could harm the individual and potentially compromise them,” said Zaid.

One spreadsheet contained a list of officers under investigation by the military, including allegations of abuses of power and substantiated claims of wrongdoing, such as wrongfully disclosing classified information.

A former government official, who reviewed a portion of the documents but did not want to be named, said that the document, in the wrong hands, provided a “blueprint” for blackmail.

Even officers who have left in recent years may still be vulnerable to coercion if they are still trusted with historical state secrets.

“Foreign powers might use that information to target those individuals for espionage or to otherwise monitor their activity in the hopes of gaining insight into US national security posture,” said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings fellow and a former attorney at the National Security Agency.

Government officials use the form as a screening mechanism, said Hennessey, but it also offers applicants the chance to inform the government of past indiscretions or concerns that eliminate the possibility of blackmail in the future, she added. “These are people whose lives can depend on sensitive information being safeguarded, so the notion they would fail to put country over self in that kind of circumstance is far-fetched and supported by relatively few historical examples,” she said.

“Still, it is the obligation of the government to keep this kind of information safe, both in order to protect the privacy of those who serve and their families and to protect them against being placed in difficult situations unnecessarily,” said Hennessey.

Though many of the files were considered “confidential” or “sensitive,” a deeper keyword-based search of the files did not reveal any material marked as classified.

A completed passport application for one of the generals was also found in the same folder, as well as scans of his own and his wife’s passports and driving licenses.

Other data included financial disclosures, bank account and routing information, and some limited medical information.

And, a smaller spreadsheet contained a list of Social Security numbers, passport numbers, and other contact information on high-profile figures and celebrities, including Channing Tatum.

The records were collected in relation to a six-day tour to Afghanistan by Tatum in 2015. An email to Tatum’s publicist went unreturned.

The drive also contained several gigabytes of Outlook email files, covering years worth of emails. Another document purported to be a backup.

Nevertheless, this would be the second breach of military data in recent months.

Potomac, a Dept. of Defense subcontractor, was the source of a large data exposure of military personnel files of physical and mental health support staff. Many of the victims involved in the data leak are part of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which includes those both formerly employed by US military branches, such as the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and those presumably still on active deployment.

It’s not known how long the backup drive was active. Given that the device was public and searchable, it’s not known if anyone other than the security researchers accessed the files.

The Office of Personnel Management, which processes security clearance applications, referred comment to the Pentagon.

In the Washington security establishment, however, the leaks are being viewed more as the latest battle in a struggle between US and Russian intelligence services being played out in the US political arena – a fight in which WikiLeaks is widely seen as sitting firmly in Moscow’s corner.

The apparent CIA hacking tools published by WikiLeaks feed directly into that struggle. Some Trump supporters have claimed that the apparent Russian hacking attacks could be a “false-flag” operation, hinting it was carried out by the new president’s domestic foes, and the “Vault 7” documents published on Tuesday give them potential ammunition.

The WikiLeaks press release highlights the CIA’s “Umbrage” group, said to collect a library of hacking tools used by intelligence agencies of foreign countries, “including the Russian Federation”, allowing them to conduct false flag operations.

“With Umbrage and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from,” WikiLeaks said.

James Lewis, senior vice-president at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and an expert on cyber security, speculated that the motive behind the leak could be to underpin the false flag narrative of the Trump camp.

“This might be one explanation for the leaks – it’s data to build a case that the Russian interference and connections are a secret ‘deep state’ plot, as the false flag bits in WikiLeaks ‘shows’,” Lewis said, putting “Vault 7” in the context of the trial of strength between the president and intelligence agencies.

“Mr Trump, who last year angrily dismissed the conclusion of intelligence officials that the Russians interfered in the presidential election to boost his candidacy, has now asked both his staff and a congressional committee investigating Moscow’s influence on the election to turn up evidence that Mr Obama led an effort to spy on him,” he said.

Perceptions of WikiLeaks in the west have changed markedly since it first became widely known in 2010 with the release of huge numbers of classified US documents from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as US embassies around the world. WikiLeaks was widely embraced by opponents of those wars and supporters of greater government transparency.

But since its high-profile role in the 2016 presidential election, it is now viewed with far greater scepticism. Its leaks focused exclusively on Hillary Clinton’s camp, and were released at critical moments in the campaign. (Following the dump of nearly 2,000 emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, Trump told voters: “I love WikiLeaks!”)

In early January, the CIA, National Security Administration (NSA) and FBI assessed with “high confidence” that Russian military intelligence was behind the anonymous hackers Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com, which stole data from prominent Democrats and passed it on to WikiLeaks.

“Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries,” the agencies found.

Assange has insisted that the documents did not come from Russian sources, although the organisation also says that in most cases it does not know the sources of the data passed on to it.

In a press release announcing the latest document dump, WikiLeaks suggested that the original source was a former US government hacker or contractor.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than four years, since Sweden sought his extradition for questioning on an accusation of sexual assault. In that time, he has hosted his own show on the Russian state-run television channel RT (formerly Russia Today).

WikiLeaks has published little or no material that could be seen as damaging to Russia, although Assange has argued that is because the leaks the organisation receives are overwhelmingly in English, while Russian-language material finds its way to other outlets.

“There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of the links between Assange and Russia,” said Susan Hennessey, a former NSA lawyer now at the Brookings Institution. “It’s certainly not a coincidence that Russian military intelligence selected WikiLeaks as a distribution platform for its Democrats hack.”

“WikiLeaks’ involvement creates a reason for suspicion. It has committed itself to putting out material that is harmful to western interests, but has assiduously avoided releasing material that could be perceived as damaging to Russian interests.”

San Francisco has taken its defiance of the feds to a new level, ending its cooperation with the FBI in an anti-terror initiative begun after 9/11 – a move crtitics say could get innocent people killed.

Critics say the sanctuary city by the bay’s latest decision to forego cooperation with Washington, by dropping out of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, could put lives at risk. The JTTF has been credited with foiling 93 Islamist terrorist attacks and plots against the U.S. since 2001, including 12 this year, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation. There are another 1,000 investigations into suspected terror activity nationwide.

These staggering statistics make the recent decision by the San Francisco police department to end the city’s partnership with the JTTF, at the behest of local activist groups that alleged Arabs and Muslims are wrongly targeted by the FBI and will be more so under the Trump administration, all the more concerning, said retired federal law enforcement officials.

“There is less chance of uncovering networks, plots, missing pieces of a puzzle, without cities participating in the JTTF.”

– Claude Arnold, former ICE investigator

“In my opinion, the decision by the mayor and the police chief to withdraw the San Francisco Police Department from the JTTF is really narrow-minded,” said Mark Rossini, a retired FBI special agent, and founding executive of the National Counterterrorism Center, who served as a representative to the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. “Politics aside, and the mayor and leaders of San Francisco have their right to their opinion, political opinion and beliefs. But when you’re working in law enforcement, law enforcement should know no politics.”

The FBI leads the 104 Joint Terrorism Task Force units across the country, but the majority of intelligence about crime and terror comes from local sources, said Claude Arnold, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, who worked in California.

“There is less chance of uncovering networks, plots, missing pieces of a puzzle, without cities participating in the JTTF,” Arnold said.

San Francisco police have dozens of undercover agents and contacts in immigrant communities helpful to federal law enforcement investigations. Conversely, two San Francisco police are federally deputized for the JTTF, and as a result have access to classified intelligence.

“Information must flow both ways in these cases,” Rossini said. “By San Francisco pulling out, you’re losing that vital link of data that the FBI and the other federal agencies and the Department of Justice will need in order to complete its cases and investigate them thoroughly.”

If San Francisco’s withdrawal from the JTTF is permanent, it could impact the safety of Americans throughout the nation, said Lauren Anderson, a former FBI agent who led the international terrorism program of the FBI’s New York JTTF, and now runs LCAnderson International Consulting.

“In virtually every terrorist prevention or incident, local law enforcement was the first point of interaction,” Anderson said.

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A man who was identified by neighbors in Connecticut as Faisal Shahzad, is shown. (AP/Orkut.com)

The 2010 Times Square would-be bomber Faisal Shahzad is an example.

“Two street vendors noticed a vehicle with smoke and told New York Police Department officers. Because NYPD was physically present on the JTTF, the information was shared immediately and members of the JTTF were at the scene in minutes,” Anderson said.

The JTTF has prevented a number of terrorist attacks, many which crossed state lines, said David Inserra of the Heritage Foundation.

In July 2012 in Alabama, Ulugbek Kodirov was sentenced to 15 years in prison for plotting to kill President Barack Obama. In November 2012, Rezwan Ferdaus was sentenced to 17 years in prison for planning to bomb the Pentagon. In March 2015, Raees Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi were sentenced in Florida for a scheme to use a weapon of mass destruction in New York City.

Whether the San Francisco police department will renegotiate the JTTF memorandum of understanding or simply refuse to participate, isn’t clear. A police department spokesperson would only say the agreement has expired and is under review.

Local activists critical of the JTTF cheered the decision by the newly appointed San Francisco police chief, on the job for just a week before pulling the plug on the partnership.

Local police, whose salaries are paid by local tax dollars, are required to follow federal law when they are deputized for the JTTF. In some cases, California laws conflict with federal law, said John Crew, a retired attorney who works with activist groups, including the ACLU and Council on American-Islamic Relations on law enforcement and civil rights matters.

“This issue is really about the need for local police officers to comply with state and local laws and policies even when they are working with the FBI JTTF,” Crew said.

Neither Crew, nor his many allies in San Francisco, are apprehensive area residents may be in danger because of a lack of representation on the JTTF.

“I’m not the least bit concerned,” Crew said.

San Francisco police work with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a government program focusing on criminal and terrorist activity, Crew said. He also maintains there is no reason police cannot work with the FBI on pressing terrorism-related investigations as long as they don’t violate California law.

But Rossini and other former federal law enforcement said they worry the conflict may prevent vital leads from surfacing.

“Last time I checked, we’re all part of the 50 states….So let us continue to work together when it comes to the law, when it comes to law enforcement,” Rossini said. “You want to do politics another day.”

An internal White House review of strategy on North Korea includes the possibility of military force or regime change to blunt the country’s nuclear-weapons threat, people familiar with the process said, a prospect that has some U.S. allies in the region on edge.

While President Donald Trump has taken steps to reassure allies that he won’t abandon agreements that have underpinned decades of U.S. policy on Asia, his pledge that Pyongyang would be stopped from ever testing an intercontinental ballistic missile—coupled with the two-week-old strategy review—has some leaders bracing for a shift in American policy.

U.S. officials have underscored the possible military dimensions of their emerging strategy in recent discussions with allies, according to people familiar with the talks.

During Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s two-day summit in February with Mr. Trump, U.S. officials on several occasions stated that all options were under consideration to deal with North Korea, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

It was clear to the Japanese side that those options encompassed a U.S. military strike on North Korea, possibly if Pyongyang appeared ready to test an ICBM, this person said. The Japanese side found that scenario “worrisome,” he said.

U.S. allies in recent years have closely aligned with Washington in trying to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on Pyongyang in an effort to force it to drop its nuclear program. But the new U.S. policy review has generated anxiety in Japan and South Korea about a radical shift. After North Korea said this year it was ready to test an ICBM, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, “It won’t happen!”

About two weeks ago, deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland convened a meeting with national security officials across the government and asked them for proposals on North Korea, including ideas that one official described as well outside the mainstream.

The request was for all options, ranging from U.S. recognition of North Korea as a nuclear state to military action against Pyongyang. Ms. McFarland’s directive was for the administration to undergo a comprehensive rethink of America’s North Korea policy.

The national security officials reported back to Ms. McFarland with their ideas and suggestions on Tuesday. Those options now will undergo a process under which they will be refined and shaped before they are given to the president for consideration.

The heightened prospect of U.S. military action in North Korea could encourage China, which fears the fallout of a military confrontation with its neighbor, to take steps Washington has long sought to choke off Pyongyang’s economic lifeline.

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s election, leaders in Tokyo and Seoul have sought to intensify the existing U.S. strategy of exerting economic and diplomatic pressure against North Korea.

“We will make sure that the North changes its erroneous calculations by further enhancing sanctions and pressure,” South Korea’s acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn said in a speech Wednesday.

After North Korea tested a ballistic missile last month just as Messrs. Abe and Trump were meeting in Florida, the Japanese leader called for Pyongyang to comply with a United Nations ban on such tests and said Tokyo and Washington would strengthen their alliance.

In his own brief remarks after Mr. Abe, Mr. Trump didn’t mention North Korea, saying only that the U.S. “stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%.”

Japan is concerned it could get sucked into a regional conflict by a U.S. military strike on North Korea, said Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, a Tokyo think tank.

Another fear for Japan is a scenario in which the U.S. instead holds talks with North Korea and reaches a deal that would lead to Washington disengaging from the region, he said.

Under its pacifist constitution, Japan remains heavily dependent on U.S. military support, not only to counter North Korea, but also China, which has stepped up a territorial challenge against Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea.

“Direct talks between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un would be a nightmare scenario for Japan,” Mr. Kotani said.

Last month, the State Department withdrew visa approvals for top North Korean officials to visit New York for unofficial talks with retired U.S. officials following the killing of Mr. Kim’s half brother, according to people familiar with the matter, dealing a setback to any attempt at rapprochement.

Mr. Trump has recently stated the U.S.’s commitment to defending both Japan and South Korea to leaders of both countries. A spokeswoman for Japan’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the details of Mr. Abe’s talks with Mr. Trump, while a spokesman for South Korea’s foreign ministry couldn’t be reached for comment.

As annual military exercises were set to begin, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke Tuesday to South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo, emphasizing that “any attack on the United States or its allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons will be met with a response that is effective and overwhelming,” said Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis.

The U.S. is in the process of installing advanced missile defenses, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, in South Korea. As part of that, South Korea said this week that it has completed a transfer of land needed as a station for the system, Capt. Davis said.

Despite concerns about a military confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea, the acceleration of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program has emboldened calls by military hawks in Japan and South Korea for capabilities to pre-emptively hit North Korean military facilities if an attack appears imminent.

Masahiko Komura, the vice president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said recently that Japan should begin discussing whether to acquire such an ability. In parliament, Mr. Abe said there were no plans to do so.

Hundreds of federal workers have been caught watching porn on the job, including viewing child pornography, according to a new investigation.

NBC News 4 in Washington, D.C., identified over 100 “egregious” cases during the past five years where federal employees watched porn for hours during the day or required an inspector general investigation into their porn habits at work. The report relied on records obtained through Freedom of Information Act from 12 separate government agencies.

“The cases include workers who admitted spending six hours a day surfing illicit images and videos and maintaining tens of thousands of adult images on their office desktops,” the report said.

The investigation revealed over 20 cases at the Justice Department during the past two years, and numerous cases at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The report includes the notorious case of an EPA employee in the Office of Air and Radiation who, while earning a $120,000 salary, watched porn between two and six hours every day, masturbated at work, and received bonuses.

The employee said that “‘a lot’ of his time each workday is spent ‘organizing’ the pornography he downloaded into saved folders,” according to the records obtained by NBC News 4.

The report noted that although being caught watching porn “opens employees to possible disciplinary action,” including being fired, several agencies said penalties are “flexible” and can carry just a written reprimand.

“This is not just an isolated incident at one single agency,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), who is pushing legislation for a zero tolerance policy toward viewing pornography on government computers. “We’re starting to find it across almost every agency.”

New cases uncovered by NBC News 4 included another EPA employee in San Francisco who watched porn at work an average of two hours a day, and an EPA contractor in North Carolina who viewed porn for three to four hours a day.

Workers at a Department of Transportation office in Washington, D.C., that was monitored for two months were found to be searching on government computers for “teen+underwear+blonde,” “teen+slut+tight+pants,” “orgy+prague+OR+Czech,” and “petite+blonde+teen.”

A Department of Justice worker in Tucson, Ariz., visited 2,500 adult websites and downloaded over 1,100 pornographic pictures at work, spending the “majority of his duty time viewing inappropriate adult websites.”

Another Justice employee in Dallas, Texas, watched porn between four and six hours every day at work and had “tens of thousands” of pornographic pictures on a work computer, “including some which might have been child pornography.”

Several other cases involved child pornography as well, including an FBI employee in Virginia who had explicit email exchanges with a ninth grader and admitted to “receiving, viewing, and saving approximately 50 images of suspected child pornography.”

The investigation covered the departments of Transportation, Justice, Interior, Labor, Commerce, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as well as the U.S. Postal Service, NASA, Export-Import Bank, the EPA, and the Social Security Administration.

The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday in a mostly party line vote.

The confirmation vote came after contentious hearings during which Democratic lawmakers questioned Pruitt over his ties to fossil fuel companies, his multiple legal challenges to EPA regulations and his public statements questioning the science behind climate change.

Senate Democrats boycotted a committee vote to move forward Pruitt’s nomination earlier this month and stretched debate before the full Senate into the early hours of Friday. On Thursday evening, some Democrats again called for Pruitt’s confirmation vote to be delayed after an Oklahoma judge ordered his office to turn over thousands of communications with fossil fuel companies to a watchdog group.

But the nominee appeared to have the votes needed to win confirmation on Friday.

Democrats Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both from energy-producing states, voted with Republicans to confirm Pruitt. Just one GOP senator, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Pruitt.

The final vote was 52 to 46 in favor of confirmation.

While Democrats and environmentalists bristled at Pruitt’s nomination from the start, conservatives and the energy industry have welcomed his efforts to place more power over drilling and mining regulations in the hands of states. He set up a “federalism unit” at the office of the Oklahoma attorney general to “combat unwarranted regulation and overreach by the federal government.”

Pruitt is seen as an ideal candidate to execute Trump’s promises to scale back the EPA’s Obama-era initiatives. He has been a leading figure in a campaign by Republican attorneys general to sue government agencies over some of President Barack Obama’s landmark achievements, including the Affordable Care Act and regulations to reduce the impacts of climate change.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation found Pruitt’s office in 2011 signed a letter criticizing environmental regulations that was drafted by lawyers for Devon Energy.

During his confirmation hearing, Pruitt rejected the claim he acted on behalf of energy companies in suing the EPA more than a dozen times. He said the suits were in the interest of Oklahoma citizens given the role of energy in the state’s economy.

Trump plans to announce executive orders during Pruitt’s swearing in at EPA headquarters, Reuters reported this week, citing sources who were briefed on the plans. Earlier in the week, Beltway newsletter Inside EPA reported the planned orders may impact the agency’s work on climate change, citing an administration source.

The president has vowed to cancel Obama’s Climate Action Plan, a framework for reducing greenhouse gas pollution, and the Clean Power Plan, a rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants. He has also threatened to defund the Paris Agreement, an international accord aimed at reducing the impact of climate change.

Trump promises to increase U.S. coal, natural gas and crude oil production, in part by making federal land more readily available to drillers and miners.